This is the master art post for smidirini's insanely fantastic story Close to Home for spn_j2_bigbang.  I completely lucked out getting her as my author and I strongly, strongly urge everyone to read her story.  It is just fantastic. I can't gush, ooh, and awe about it enough.  

I owe a massive, huge, overwhelming thank you to smidirini for writing such a visually rich story.  If I had a year to work on the art for it, I probably would have handed her the entire thing as a graphic novel.  I wanted to do it all!!  I also owe a huge thank you to ficliously for being my art beta, gopher, and general all around cheerleader.  And, of course, thanks is owed by all to wendy and thehighwaywoman for somehow managing to organize this massive project.  Thank you!!

Warning: This artwork contains spoilers for the fic.  Her story involves a murder case and while it doesn't give away who the killer is, I strongly urge you to read it before looking at the art.









Main artwork for the fic.  Main story header and story art:






Clicking on any image will bring up the original.  All are digital art and made entirely within PhotoShop.





And for completeness sake, here are the various headers used in the story:



Resources used:

Blood brushes: [1] [2] [3]
Splatter brushes: [1] [2] [3] [4]
Hair brushes: [1] [2] [3]

Screen used caps by raloria bellanut  and oxoniensis 

Tutorial on how to make a photograph look like a pencil drawing can be found here.

Tutorial on how to make a photograph look like a watercolor/illustration can be found here.

Questions about any of my techniques happily answered in comments.

Underwater photograph by Zena Holloway

Almost all stock photography (pencils, erasers, paper backgrounds, etc.) from http://www.sxc.hu  A few came from random Google image searches.